justteachers – join a top rated supply teaching agency today

With the number of teaching graduates dropping, it is unsurprising that academies and schools are turning to education supply teaching agencies to help fill the gap. With over 500 teaching agencies across the UK, how can you ensure you choose the best agency for you?

Here are four questions we think you should ask a teaching agency before making the decision:

Does the teaching agency pay you fairly and on time?

Many teachers are now turning to a teaching agency because of a lifestyle choice but you still want your past experience to be acknowledged. However, pay rates can vary greatly between education agencies. Agencies that want to attract outstanding teachers to supply to their schools will pay you in line with your experience because they want you to deliver outstanding lessons and, in turn, be requested back by the school. Be aware of agencies that just want to fill positions with paying little attention to your specified subject or age range experiences. It makes little sense to register with a teaching agency where you are not paid fairly and not paid on time.

Does the teaching agency comply with the Agency Workers Regulations?

When choosing a teaching agency, make sure you pick one that is Agency Workers Regulations (AWR) compliant; this ensures that if you are in a teaching position for twelve weeks or more you are entitled to be paid as if you were employed directly by the school, often referred to as “paid to scale”. The Agency Workers Regulations (AWR) was introduced in 2011, with its main aim to introduce equal treatment for agency workers. Although all teaching agencies should adhere to the legislation, not all do, and if you are placed in a long term supply position you could be losing out on a lot of money.

Does the agency charge restrictive temp to perm fees?

Supply teaching is a great opportunity to work in a number of different schools or academies and to get a number of different teaching opportunities, experience and skills, which pupils will benefit from. Often if you are successful in a supply position the Head or Principle will offer you a permanent place at their school or academy. Some teaching agencies may try to hinder the recruitment cycle by seeking to charge an extortionate temp to perm fee. A good teaching agency has both the interests of you and the schools at heart. Some solutions include a transitional period once the school has stated they would like to offer you a permanent role after the initial supply job. An added benefit to this solution is that it gives you the time to see if the job role and the school or academy is right for you, and after an agreed time you can simply transfer to the school on a permanent basis.

Does the teaching agency supply teachers to schools or academies where you want to teach?

Sounds obvious, but with a lack of available teachers, supply agencies are ramping up their marketing budgets to attract teachers to register. The most common and effective candidate attraction tool aside from an agencies website is to use Google Adwords and in turn creating “pay per click” adverts that are generated from the words you enter in to your Google search, resulting those agencies appear further up the page. However, not all the teaching agencies that been listed are relevant to you, for example if you searched say “teaching agencies in Lincoln” that doesn’t mean that all the agencies listed will have schools or academies that supply to Lincoln. Depending on the age range that you teach, you should ask which Primary, Secondary or SEN schools the teaching agency work with that are close to you, as often teaching supply positions are last minute and to ensure regular teaching work it is essential to have a good number of schools near you.

justteachers is a leading supplier of teachers, nursery nurses and support staff into schools, colleges and nurseries across the U.K. Our continued expansion reflects the high level of service we deliver to our members, our commitment to safeguarding the welfare of children and young people, as well as the support we offer our candidates and clients to ensure they can focus on delivering outstanding education.

We have offices across the U.K, supplying London and the South, the Midlands, the North West, Yorkshire, Cambridgeshire, Lancashire and Lincolnshire.

If you are interested in the services we have to offer, you can register using the link below: